


this lovely light (inside my bones)

by arabellagaleotti



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Abusive Parents, BAMF Tony Stark, F/M, Gen, Howard Stark's Bad Parenting, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark Friendship, Kid Tony Stark, Maria Stark's Good Parenting, Minor Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark-centric, well sorta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-25 21:23:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20730980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arabellagaleotti/pseuds/arabellagaleotti
Summary: Tony Stark has a star in his chest long before Afghanistan, long before the surgery and long before man who put it there.He is born with it.





	this lovely light (inside my bones)

Tony Stark has a star in his chest long before Afghanistan, long before the surgery and long before man who put it there. He is born with it.

Tony knows he's different, there's a star burning inside his chest, a kind of radiance inside his eyes that gives it away. Sometimes, in the quiet of his room with the airplane models hanging in the corner, he likes to open his mouth and let that celestial power flow free. It's low, humming, tuneless, and betrays some sort of haunting power. The first time anyone hears it he is four and helping Ana bake muffins.

“What is that?” she asks, looking up from the mixture. Little Tony is sitting on the bench opposite her, doodling pattern on the granite countertop with his finger and humming, if you can call it that.

Tony closes his mouth abruptly. He has a feeling Ana should not know about his star, as much as he loves her, this is his. “Nothing. 'Prolly just music someone's playing."

The first time his father hits him that star flares, bright and angry, inside his chest. It almost hurts. He looks up, braces both palms on the carpet of his father’s office and pushes himself _ up _ _ . _He looks at his father, eyes burning with all the light in the world contained inside those eyes.

His father hits him a lot, he guesses. There’s always bruises stretched along his ribs, always cut lips and cuts and marks from beatings. Jarvis looks at him sad, Ana looks at him like she's mad, but trying to hide it. Her face creases, like a piece of paper crumpled inside his fist.

His mother is another story.

He remembers one specific memory, he’s maybe six and at home from school.

His mother enters grandly, as she always does. Tony’s been waiting at the top of the staircase for half an hour. She’s home from an extensive holiday in Italy.

He stands up as she starts directing Jarvis and the other helpers to start depositing her suitcases down. She’s clad in a kimono, long and flowy, she gestures across the hall, sleeves flying. She turns and sees him, throwing her arms open for him, once again compelling those sleeves to billow out from her.

“Baby!” she cries, and he rushes down the staircase to her.

She hugs him, quick and tight, then pushes him away for inspection. She’s been gone nearly a month and he supposed not much has changed about him, perhaps his hair is a little longer, his knees are a little more scraped.

“Oh,” she coos, in her way she does whenever she's just back from Italy, where a little more of her country seeps into her soul for a moment but leeches away as soon as New York grips her again. “You have grown so much, my little dove.”

“Mrs. Stark?” a servant asks, approaching them, he holds out a pill caddy to her that rattles like hail. “Would you like it now?”

She pursues her lips, “put it in my room,” she says, and waves him off.

Tony wants to talk to her more, but she’s soon swept away by Jarvis, who draws her away along with others who need things tended to.

Tony goes to his room. There'll be more opportunities later. She’s home for at least a week this time.

A few hours later, when everything has died down and the sky is getting dark, Tony creeps down to her room — he wouldn't even call it Howard's, at this point.

She’s sitting on the bed, wearing an elaborate dressing gown, drinking a glass of dark wine. He can tell she's taken her pills by now, there's a certain way she holds herself as if she’s a marionette doll, the way she blinks longer and longer each time, a ways she cradles her glass like she might fall asleep and spill it.

“Mama,” he asks quietly, fingers curling around the door.

“Oh,” she startles, then beckons him forward. “Anthony, baby, come here,” she says, voice heavy and sleepy, wrapped in a quilt.

She gathers him to her, and tips that red to her mouth. “Do you love me, Anthony?” she hums.

Anthony thinks. “Yes,” he decides, after a moment, his star telling him he’s right. “Of course I do, mama.”

“Hm,” she says, and that's all.

And he falls asleep in her rose-wine scented hold, warm and safe for the moment.

\--

He grows up a little, goes to boarding school, learns that he's what they call a prodigy. He doesn't mind being a genius, it’s boring actually. All the classes are dull. The people are behind. He needs _ more _.

So he skips four grades. In hindsight, probably not best for development and social interaction. After a few failed tries at various boarding schools and institutions for the gifted, eight years of them, to be exact, he goes to MIT at fourteen.

It;’s better. He can actually learn, the classes are at least semi-challenging. His room-mate — more like caregiver — is called Rhodey, he’s slightly disgruntled by having to look after a fourteen-year-old his first year of college.

Tony doesn't mind, he would hate it too. I mean, he does, kind of. It’s lonely here. At all the others, he actually had to talk to people, group projects and dining halls and assemblies. Here, it’s only the star inside by chest.

“Hey,” his caregiver roommate says one night as he’s heading out to the hallway.

“Hi?” he says in return, pausing by the door, his coat frozen in his hands.

“I...I heard you’re smart,” he said haltingly.

“Uh huh,” he says non committedly, turning a rubix cube over. “That's what people say.”

James clears his throat. “I’m sorry. For um, ignoring you. It wasn't cool.”

He scoffs a little, stuff his arms into the sleeves of his coat. “It’s fine. I don't blame you.”

“You should,” he says, “you totally should. I’ve been horrible. When you’re — you’re a kid. It’s not your fault.”

“Don't call me a kid, James Rhodes,” Tony says, “I'm not.”

He swings open the door, is stepping out when James calls out, “What are you, then?”

Tony pauses. “I’m...well, I’m Tony Stark.” His star beats, twice, like it's telling him it's true.

After that, they’re friends, of a sort. Rhodey leaves leftover pizza on his bed, does his laundry for him. And Tony scrawls notes on his homework and sharpens his pencils when they get dull and once, carries him home after he’s drunk at a frat party.

“Tony?” Rhodey murmurs into his side. They’re staggering along to their dorm. James is much heavier than Tony, and the _ slightly _ ratio is off, so to speak.

“Yeah, James Rhodes?” Tony says, tilting slightly to the side.

“What’chu doing?” he mumbled into his shoulder. Tony slips, and they nearly go tumbling.

“Whoa! Whoa!” Tony shouts, and manage to right themselves. “I’m bringing you home, because you’re drunk and in no shape to go back.”

“I thought ‘I meant to be takin’ care o’ you,” Rhodey replies.

“I don’t need to be taken care of.”

“Right, right, ‘'cos you’re _ Tony Stark,” _Rhodey exaggerates.

“Yeah. That's right,” they breach their dorm, Tony leaves Rhodey on the wall as he unlocks the door. 

“But tha’ stupid,” Rhodey argues. “‘'Cos you’re Tony Stark doesn't mean anything.” Tony flicks on the light, grabs him and tugs him inside.

“It will,” the light in his chest promises, “I’m gonna be a star, just wait.” he manhandles Rhodey over to his bed.

“You like ‘tuh sing, or something?” Rhodey asks, lying on his back. “New York is close.”

Tony thinks. “Yeah, it is. And yeah, I do. But that's not what I’m gonna be famous for.”

“Right. Engineering.” Rhodey throws a pillow over his face.

“Yeah. Have some water,``Tony grabs a cup, fills it up, holds it to his lips.

“Thanks,” Rhodey drains half the cup in one gulp.

“I’ll turn out the light,” Tony says, flip the switch. The dark is welcome.

“You’re a good guy, Tony Stark,” Rhodey whispers.

“You too, James Rhodes,” Tony can imagine a light under his shirt, where the warmth of the celestial body inside his torso, only restrained by blood and flesh and muscle, is glowing bright and brighter than ever before.

\--

He graduates into a world where people know his name. Into one where when he says, _ I'm Tony Stark _they listen, they hear.

Rhodey goes into the military because he can’t pay for college, even though only offers countless times, Rhodey just says, _ tones, i was gonna do this anyway _ _ . this way i can’t back out. _So Tony listens, watches him walk away, bag over his back, clad in military green.

Absentmindedly, he feels like he’s done all this before, like he’s reliving, everything. everything has a sense of deja vu, and...he doesn't mind. There are no wrong decisions to make, no right ones. Really, he doesn't make any at all. He’s stuck in limbo, in purgatory.

\--

Christmas rolls around, and his parents are dead. He hardly notices, really. If Obie hadn't called and their hadn't been a press maelstrom the next day, he wouldn't have noticed for months.

But, sadly, he does. So he has to sit through their funerals, where the military babble on for hours and no one really listens. Everyone knows Howard was a shitty guy. No one cares when you have money

He's meant to be sad, so he acts sad. Soon, he’s sick of it, so he tries being crazy, instead. That sticks. He goes on drink-binges, to parties, and even though he never fit in before, now he’s done with caring what people think of him, it’s quite a realisation, one of his best since DUM-E.

After that, he gets bolder, his face is in the magazines more often. Some girl comes up to him at one of the parties he’s meant to go to, and he kisses her, they tumble into a spare bedroom and she straddles him, dim light slanting in from the window to land upon her face.

In the morning, she just pulls a shirt over her head, kisses him on the corner of his mouth, does the zipper and button on her jeans and says, “that was fun, see you around.”

He never sees her again, but still, he doesn't really mind. She’s the birthplace, the ground zero of the new him.

\--

He moves to California, because it feels more fitting then New York, with its age-old history and family houses, the grime that’s been built by hundreds of years and can never be scoured off.

California is new, shiny, bright, it’s Hollywood and heat. It’s sand, tumbleweeds and areas of empty desert. He’s the future, and it makes sense he lives in the future-town, where anything is possible, where the new age lies. It's just waiting to be developed, stretches of desert and tumbleweeds ready for suburbia.

Obie thinks he's crazy, but Tony promises an extra design a month, so he agrees. He drives in by himself, everyone else thinks he’s on a private jet but he really just chucked a few of his suitcases in the hold.

“Hi, Tony,” a voice came from the door. Tony looks up, stashing the last of the minibar into a duffel. It’s Quinn, a stewardess.

“Hey,” he returns, standing up. “You ready?”

“You know it, she grins. Quinn likes breaking the rules. Not that this is breaking the rules, per say.

The keys drop into his hand, and they trade places, Tony stepping out into the brisk New York air, Quinn into the climate-controlled plane.

“Wheels up in five!” she calls after him, and he barely pauses on plane staircase.

It is the most beautiful thing Tony’s ever brought. A _ Jaguar E-Type. _With leather seats and a shiny new paint job, it runs like a dream and is perhaps his faverite thing in the world

He starts the engine, it sends rolling vibrations up his legs and though his body. He grins, broadly, and presses down, surely, as he spins out of the parking lot.

The security guard stares at him though he plexiglass. He smiles at him. His flight left ten minutes ago.

He opens the barrier, wordless, and Tony flips on the radio.

It’s left on some rock channel, he guesses Quinn likes that stuff. He can't be bothered changing it, and, well, he likes it. The likes rocking his head and banging his foot and yelling along to the lyrics. His star jumps along to the bass and he get lost in it, the steady, powerful beat. He finally understands why people like music so much.

\--

He’s tired of living in high-rises and villas and switching houses every time he gets kicked out or just bored, so he wants to build a house.

He finds a place called Point Dume, and loves it. He tells DUM-E and the robot just _freezes _for a second then slowly points his claw towards himself. Tony laughs, tapping his claw. "Yes, buddy. You. You."

Then, people tell him he can’t. That's their first mistake.

They tell him that it’s impossible that it’s unstable, that no building can be built on that cliff.

That's their second mistake.

He does it. He doesn't sleep for three days, and by the end of it he’s seeing clowns in his workshop, when he’s 92 percent sure that there aren't any.

Above all, it’s _ beautiful _.

He loves it, he loves it so much that he spends the first few days of his residency just wandering around, staring at all of it. DUM-E likes it, he can tell from his beeps, from the way he twirls his claw.

\--

Something flicks, like a switch, when he turns twenty-seven. it's like he's been plugged in. He sits in his workshop, for hours, just in silent, listening to the energy around him.

The music becomes something more, some sort of escape. He spends even more time in the workshop, steps into the shoes of the reclusive genius workaholic stereotype.

It’s more fitting than he first thought.

He's doing a demo in Afghanistan, and then, he’s got a hole in his chest, and for a horrible, terrible second, he thinks that they've stolen his star. Then, it aches, and he gasps, finding the wires connected to it, like he's his own nuclear reactor.

_ Reactor _, that gives him an idea.

He makes the arc reactor, and that star pulses, gentle and low, comforting. The star has a home inside his chest, now. And even as it grates against his ribs, burns his lungs with each breath, he’s glad that it has found a safe hollow inside his chest.

And then, when he figures out at home in his workshop, that his arc doesn't only protect his star, it taps into it. He can materialise his power, shoot it from his hands like heavenly fire.

\--

He’s with Pepper, they’re drunk and lying on the floor, cream shag rug under them.

This is what they do, after fancy galas and benefits. They come come and he takes off his suit jacket and she kicks off her shoes and slides down the zip of her tight dress and then they lie on the ground and feel their souls leave their hollow bodies for one meager second. 

“You ever want to go back,” she whispers one day.

He flexes his fingers, just to see if he can, then says, “to where?”

“I don't know. To being young.”

“My youth was a trainwreck.”

“I know. So was mine, but isn't that why you’d want to go back?” she proposes, and slides her hand up his side.

“So what, I can preach to the nineties club scene not to do coke?”

She snorts a laugh and rolls over. “If you want.”

“I don't know,” Tony says, fingering his arc reactor. “Maybe. Maybe not. What’s done is done. The past is done. No use now.”

“You’re pretty interesting, Tony Stark,” she murmurs, pressing her cheek harder into the rug.

“Believe me, I know.”

No one ever notices that he doesn't need a blow torch to weld, that his music sometimes doesn't play and another strange sound replaces it.

He’s glad, actually. His star has been his for so long he doesn't know if he can handle it being anyone else's.

He dies, — and isn't that a strange thing to say so impassively — and it’s okay — another strange thing to say, he’s really on a roll — 

He looks at Pepper, and he looks at Peter, and Steve, and everyone on this ashy battlefield and he’s...happy. His legacy is here, his legacy is a surviving earth, his legacy is his daughter and his pseud-son, it’s a house that should not have been built, a robot that is 35 years old, memories of lying on rugs and driving cross country, of his mother’s rose and wine scent.

It’s time.

It’s okay,

His star glows brighter and brighter as he closes his eyes. It warms him up, head to toe. He hasn't made his eyes glow or his fingers spark for a long time, but he can feel it now. He opens his eyes, one last time, see's everyone's shocked face.

Huh. Suckers. He woulda found out within five minutes of living in the tower.

  



End file.
